Dimitri Young is almost retired

He’s still hanging around the Nats because he’s still technically on the roster, but Da Meat Hook is basically done with baseball. And based on how his summer has gone, he seems to be just fine with that:

“It’s been real cool,” he continued. “I just came back from Toronto. I went to watch my brother [Delwyn] play. I did it like a fan would. Instead of calling the clubhouse guy — ‘Come pick me up!’ — and do all that stuff like a baseball player, I was like, You know, I’m gonna do it like a true fan would. Took a cab over there. Went to the ticket counter. Walked in, walked around the stadium. Sat down. And watched a major league ballgame.”

If there is any justice in the world, Young will get a John Kruk-esque “let’s put a down-to-Earth dude who can relate to the fans” job on a studio show next year. Prediction: he’d be a gajllion times more interesting to watch than John Kruk.

Nothing is a more sad commentary on the decline in the newspaper industry than the fall of the Washington POST. The absence of investigative journalism over the past 10 years represents a complete abandonment of their heritage. And their sports page contains little more than a daily round of cheerleading and apologias for the Redskins. Sad.

Da Meat Hook would probably make an excellent assistant at Washington or Pittsburgh. As for whether he’d be more interesting than Kruk, I think his decline on BBTN is due more to the overcrowded “cavalcade” of announcers than to any real lack of insight.

Hard to believe that, at the trading deadline in 2007, with numerous AL teams interested, Jim Bowden chose to give DY a 2-year extension rather than trade him. He’s produced essentially nothing since. Yet another reason to despair for the future of my Nationals.